Memeorandum

November 16, 2017

Bringing People Together

Embattled Senate candidate Roy Moore gets off a good line here after four more women come forward with tawdry accusations:

Unsurprisingly to just about anyone here in the northeast Alabama community where Mr. Moore began his political career, the Republican nominee has defiantly shrugged off the anger and broadsides of Republicans in Washington.

Indeed, to simultaneously be on the offensive and the defensive is almost customary for Mr. Moore, who was, in effect, twice ousted from the Alabama Supreme Court.

“Obviously, I’ve made a few people mad,” Mr. Moore said during a campaign stop at a revival in South Alabama on Tuesday. “I’m the only one who can unite Democrats and Republicans because I seem to be opposed by both.”

But as Mr. Moore’s supporters struck an aggressive posture, the candidate’s troubles mounted when the Alabama Media Group and The Washington Post each published accounts from women who said they had interacted with Mr. Moore years ago. One of the women, Tina Johnson, said that Mr. Moore had groped her buttocks in 1991, when she was 28.

“He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” Ms. Johnson said, according to the Alabama Media Group report. Ms. Johnson said she had been meeting with Mr. Moore, then a lawyer in private practice, in relation to a child custody matter.

Twenty-eight years old? Hey, she wasn't fourteen or sixteen! Which prompts a flashback to the early Wild Bill Clinton years and somebody's tell-all book about the 'bimbo eruptions' with which the Clinton War Room contended on an almost daily basis. The quip, probably from James Carville and certainly paraphrased - "Today is a good news day - the allegation is about consensual sex."

DEEP ERRATA: And they wonder why we think they are weak on defense: In the course of double-checking my 'war room' memory (I'm thinking the non-consensual stuff started with Paula Jones in 1994) I came across this gem from Carville, reported without comment by the Times:

The argot of the campaign would make a pacifist shudder. The room where Mr. Carville works and shouts is the "war room." Betsey Wright, the longtime Clinton aide who oversees the research operation that investigates and answers accusations against the candidate, is, a campaign official said, "the Secretary of Defense." Describing the campaign's reaction to an attack by President Bush on Mr. Clinton's health care proposals, Mr. Carville estimates the level of response in Pentagon jargon as "Defcon-5," or highest alert.

OK, Defcon-5 is the lowest level, but thanks for playing Toy Soldier. And Carville is a Marine. Geez! Or to be fair, since this scale is commonly misunderstood, maybe Carville was dialing it to "Dumb" for his audience, namely Times reporters and the readers who love them. Of course for real flair he should have dialed it up to Defcon 11. No other war room can do that!

And is there a statute of limitations on Times corrections? Twenty-five years may be enough.

Comments

It's fun that everyone can see straight through Matt Yglesias's assertion that Clinton should have resigned because of the Lewinsky affair.

As one commenter on Althouse says:

So years later, when it no longer matters and because the past cannot be changed, MY argues that bums like WJ Clinton should have resigned or otherwise been thrown out of office. Anyone familiar with MY knows that he says this because the Democrats now view that argument as strategically and tactically useful.

Will respond to cathy f's question on the inanity of the remarks by the ed prof, these people now truly do believe they can rewire human nature via the activities mandated in the classroom and the neural effects of years of such a focus.

It was a relief to get to watch blacklist fall finale. The ed profs and all the other profs who push theory instead of knowledge have no idea of the effect of radically changing what it means to know in order to create a "new kind of citizen".

The Trump administration does not need a sexual harassment story on its doorstep. It particularly does not need a sexual harassment story involving Gloria Allred, unless they can prove the Moore story she's involved with is a fabrication.

Soooo, looking at how Trump handles this situation (where he has been mercifully quiet) is going to be interesting. Maybe we get a sense at how astute his 4-D chess game really is.

Appalled, I'd think this is a no brainer for Trump. Why would he side with his enemies against his base? It's true that restraining from commenting is wise.
He'll find a way to signal to his base that he's with them. Well, that's my expectation.

In a sense, the opposite is true, no?
If Moore loses, a political lesson is learned. Ambushes become a more common tactic.
If Moore wins, the accusers are forced to take the slow path, file formal court cases, provide evidence, respond to countering arguments and so on. Likely many/most/all go away.

See MM, if McConnell had been half as crafty as he wants people to think, he might have done just that: secure the seat with Moore then if he doesn't play ball, then threaten to ruin him until he resigns...then repeat the process.

Now that McConnell has smeared the toothpaste all over the place, he might not be able to get it back into the tube.

And now that 40 year old sexual rumors are fair game, he'd better hope there are more D's in that closet than R's...but why would there be?

Being a creep (HW Bush or Joe Biden), or being a rape-rapist? Begging a pretty girl for favors would get a lot of men in trouble, back in the day. Proven like in a criminal proceeding with, you know, charges, evidence, testimony and judges, or proven like Lindsay Graham says "smells true to me"?

I seriously doubt All Red will ever be brought to heel. She knows Sullivan and how to skate on defamation of a public figure as well as the Clintons know how to skate on racketeering.
The bar won't touch her as long as she is attacking the right people and has not been convicted of a felony.

Look at this insanity - "MEANWHILE: Two more women who were teenagers during the same period have described unwanted advances by Moore. One alleges that he forced a kiss on her during a date. She was around 18 at the time."

Colleague Catherine Herridge rpts Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS refused to answer questions related to DNC, the Clinton campaign & his relationship with specific journalists. He did not verify the dossier

========================

I got the nenws he didn't verify it, but I did NOT see that he wouldn't answer questions about the DNC or journalists.

Why would Pence's ex-Press Secretary go on TV and warn that Moore is more a Schumer democrat than a conservative MAGA Trumper? Still waiting for someone to explain to me, if Moore is in fact a conservative or not. Was he ever a legislator so that there is a record of positions?

This is the 3rd time I have asked this question and so far no one has been able to show me his political leanings and positions.

His fight for the Ten Commandments tells me his moral compass is Christian.

From his campaign site:

"A strong family based on marriage between one man and one woman is and should remain our only guide and model. I oppose abortion, same-sex marriage, civil unions, and all other threats to the traditional family order."

Re: statins. I took them a few years ago and stopped due to side effects. At my Drs appt last week he made a pitch to have me try them again. He’s a young guy and big with stats. He showed me that without the statins I was 8% more likely to have a heart issue than similar population. With the statins it drops to 5%. I responded that for a 3% reduction it wasn’t worth any potential side effects. He turned to the young female Dr that was shadowing him that day and said “and that’s what an informed decision looks like”. Statins done, over, finis.

With Moore we're exactly where we were when this started.
Allred's chick is, as always, a demonstrable scheming, lying nutcake which leaves several claimants saying Moore was a 30 year old guy who tried to steal a kiss from them as ~18 year olds.
And then the one aberration from the girl who claims she was 14 and he tried to steal more than a kiss. The timing, her reputation, the discrepancy over the phone, etc, lead me to believe that if anything occurred, which is highly doubtful, she was almost certainly not 14 at the time.

I think somebody who wants to be the next Drudge should create a website where anybody can post any sexual accusation they like against any elected official or their staff from any time in history. Offer prizes if any claim results in a conviction, firing or lost election.

Long, but I thought this comment from T_D was interesting. For Appalled, if he's reading.

[–]HuggableBear 59 points 12 hours ago

A woman who grew up in Gadsden called into a local radio show today and was talking about life back then.

It's basically an incredibly poor, rural community exactly like what you imagine when you hear the word Alabama. This woman got married at 15 to a man who was 26, with the blessing of both their parents. Six of the girls in her grade at high school dropped out to do the same thing.

In these rural towns 40 years ago, girls didn't go to college. If they worked, they worked as a grocery store cashier. The goal of almost every one of them was to marry someone who could provide for them and pop out some kids. That meant finding someone established and successful, and that meant not wasting your energy on kids your age. There was no point worrying about schooling, you weren't going to use it anyway. Your job as a teenage girl in your physical prime was to find an older man to marry and then get pregnant ASAP.

This is exactly what is being described about Moore in the seemingly legit accusations. He dated younger girls. Why? Because everyone was. By the time you were 30 in Gadsden, Alabama in the 70's, you were a spinster and you were going to die with your cats. Moore was one of the most eligible bachelors in town. Of course he was dating everyone's daughters, their mothers were setting them up with him hoping he would give their daughter a decent life where she could be a house wife and a mom and not need to sling pie at the Waffle House to help make ends meet.

Moore isn't denying those allegations. He says he doesn't remember these particular girls but he dated a lot of girls back then, mostly at the behest of their mothers.

The 14 year old he has denied vehemently from the word go and this idiot with the forged signature is clearly lying too. Those are the only two I care about and they both appear to be false. The other "accusations" are literally nothing more than "he dated the same girls the other men in town dated."

Like, where do people think the stereotypes of Alabama come from? This was life down there back then, it's still that way in a lot of towns down here, and it wasn't at all weird or creepy back then, not to them. To the rest of us we just shake our heads and laugh about rednecks, but that's their life. You can't judge a man harshly for living the life he grew up in.

The above comment also explains precisely why Moore having dated teenagers in his late 20s and early 30s would never have been an issue in his prior elections, because it would have been the same thing so many other Alabama men would have done at the same age....including Democrats.

You know, I graduated from high school in 1966. Quite a few gals quit school early to get married, some because they had to, including the head of the cheerleading squad. This was suburban Indianapolis.

Probably only about 20% of the girls I graduated with went to college. Most got jobs with the phone company or insurance companies and married within a couple of years.

Small town Indiana was more like Alabama at that time. It's so easy for people to forget how things were then, and younger people have no idea how much things have changed.

A well stated question, and clearly no one here has an answer. All I saw in response was along the lines of "Moore has the right enemies".

I'm in that camp too. The Dem/media/GOPe maneuvers have my dander up. Judge Moore may very well prove to be a loose cannon. At this point though, I'm in a "they came for white Christians and I did nothing" viewpoint. Certainly, giving the seat to a Dem through withheld support, or allowing elites to dictate the outcome is a bad solution.

I'm just messing with you, Porch!! Your pasted article is on point. There's no one I know - and I do mean no one - who could ever care about Allred or her phony bullshit. Not one.

And, again, Strange would have won the runoff had Mitch not dumped millions of dollars in bogus negative ads against Moore. And, again once more, Southerners hate nothing more than outsiders trying to tell us what to do. It has the opposite effect.

re: Bannon and the idea that Moore is his 'candidate' - Roy has been running for higher office for decades. Bannon has nothing substantive to do with this race.

Bottom line: if Roy doesn't win by at least ten points (assuming the election occurs as planned) then I'll keep my boat in dry storage all next season. Mark it down.

My wife came from one of those kind of communities (Southwestern Virginia), so you are engaging in a little "ruralsplaining" there, whether you meant to or not.

I don't like the Moore charges, because there is really nothing you can do with them. I see a guy who, in his 30s, liked them young, living in a culture where liking them young wasn't unusual. (Parts of the Evangelical culture where Moore comes from also does not have a problem with older man dating and marrying much younger.)

There have been two stories, which, if true, are disturbing, and a third which, if true, earned Mr. Moore a slap in the face. But there's no way to prove any of those stories true, there are no stories of Mr. Moore using his power as a judge or a prosecutor to take advantage of women, and there is nothing that dates to our current century. And finally, the two disturbing stories and the rump pinching story aren't all that similar -- and these guys always seem to act in a pattern.

So, as I have said, if you are inclined to vote for Mr. Moore, I wouldn't change your mind over this.

And this is (one reason among many) why I totally oppose asset forfeiture laws. Talk about bad incentives:

Sources say it started when two special ops officers from the 12th Precinct were operating a “push off” on Andover near Seven Mile. That is when two undercover officers pretend to be dope dealers, waiting for eager customers to approach, and then arrest potential buyers and seize their vehicles.

But this time, instead of customers, special ops officers from the 11th Precinct showed up. Not realizing they were fellow officers, they ordered the other undercover officers to the ground.

FOX 2 is told the rest of the special ops team from the 12th Precinct showed up, and officers began raiding a house in the 19300 block of Andover. But instead of fighting crime, officers from both precincts began fighting with each other.

Sources say guns were drawn and punches were thrown while the homeowner stood and watched.

There's so much wrong here I don't even know where to begin. But maybe with this:

I thought the point of undercover stings was to catch the person selling/providing the illegal service (be it drugs, prostitution, gambling, whatever), not the customers.

And I thought the justification for seizing assets (like vehicles) was that they were assumed to be the fruits of the crimes. You can argue that a drug dealer's fancy car was likely bought with money he made selling illegal drugs. But I don't see any possible justification for seizing assets from the buyers, unless the idea is that if you are charged with ANY crime, the state should get to go through your possessions and take whatever it feels like, because you're a Bad Guy.

Agree, James. It drives me bonkers when a genuinely good person like Jeff Sessions attributes to others his own sense of honor and values. So Sessions can "LOVE that program" because he cannot accept that others will certainly abuse it. That blind spot is why he is the wrong AG at this point in history.

I think henry posted this, worth taking a moment to reflect on the velocity of change, political change, culture change.
I think we've passed a tipping point. In the past, men would see how far they could get. Women might not like it, but they were at least expecting it, prepared for it.
Don't think that will fly in the future.https://mobile.twitter.com/CollegeFix/status/931153128841535488
Students deface MLK chapel to protest rape culture.

based on the comments relayed by Porch and those from Mr Beasts himself, i would conclude that the subject on which to attack Moore was chosen by the swamp after rejecting their first inclination to attack him for having a funny accent.